CHENNAI: North Chennai residents want a better deal from civic officials in allocation of funds and development of infrastructure. They no longer want to be poor cousins to their central and south Chennai counterparts.

At a meeting of North Chennai District Exnora held on Saturday, the members citing various development works that had taken place in south Chennai when compared to north Chennai, wanted Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to set up a North Chennai Development Committee headed by an IAS officer.

Coordination panel

The committee, to be exclusively formed for identifying and expediting infrastructure development works, shall include officials from all government departments for easy coordination of development activities, pointed out the members.

The members also wanted residents welfare associations to be represented in the committee.

Citing statistics the members pointed out that of the 11mini-flyovers constructed, 10 of them are located in South Chennai and the only flyover supposed to be constructed at Perambur has remained a non-starter.

Likewise, on the issue of privatisation of conservancy work by the civic agency, the members questioned the reason behind handing over conservancy work in south Chennai to a private player.

R. Govindaraj, Secretary, Exnora International, says: "While north Chennai is thickly populated and generates huge volume of garbage, the civic agency has totally neglected this area."

Traffic congestion

On traffic congestion, parking woes and encroachment of footpaths, the members wanted the State Government to issue an order stating that unless adequate parking facilities were created, plan sanctions would not be issued for multi-storey buildings. In this connection, the civic agency could utilise the various bus terminii for constructing multi-storey parking lots to overcome parking problems, participants suggested.

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